CUB 57618

KRINDLE, Hon.

The Commission appeals a decision of the board of referees. The issue is whether the claimant voluntarily left her employment without just cause. The board found that the claimant had been constructively dismissed by the employer.

The claimant had been hired as a part-time bookkeeper. Over time, she began to assume front end/ receptionist duties and built her position up into a full-time position.

After a time, the employer decided to advertise for someone full-time to perform the front-end duties, at a rate of pay of $6.00 per hour more than the claimant was being paid. The claimant applied for that position and was unsuccessful. She was then expected to train the new employee, at least on the administrative and computer aspects of the front-end duties.

The board concluded that the claimant had been constructively dismissed. The claimant testified that the effect of the hiring of the new employee would be to reduce her hours substantially and to render her subject to lay-off. The commission argues that those were assumptions only by the claimant and that there was no evidence to support those assumptions. The claimant had previously worked as part-time bookkeeper for the employer. The claimant had previously had her hours cut because of lack of full-time work as a bookkeeper. The claimant was aware of the percentage of her time that was required for bookkeeping and the percentage of her time that was required for the work that would be taken over by the new employee. Her assumptions were based on inferences from known facts rather than from ungrounded speculation.

The board of referees accepted the assumptions of the claimant. In doing so, it did not act on the basis of no evidence as is alleged by the commission. The claimant and the board are entitled to draw reasonable inferences from known facts. The amount of time bookkeeping alone had taken in the past and did take at the time the new employee was taken on were facts known to the claimant. How the employer had responded in the past when there was insufficient bookkeeping work to occupy the claimant for fourty hours per week was also a fact known to both.

I do not accept that there was no evidence of a substantial and detrimental change to the position of the claimant as a result of the hiring of the new employee. The position of the board was one that it could reasonably have arrived at on the evidence before it.

The appeal is dismissed.

Ruth Krindle

UMPIRE

OTTAWA, Ontario
May 16, 2003